My English Rose
by Sam King
Summary: Three years after the events of Russian Sunflower, Arthur is trying to move one with a new life only to be haunted by faces he can't remember. And Francis is a broken man once again still trying to find a way to cope with the loss of yet another lover. Until they meet once again. But will this new relationship last or will the memories of the past continue to haunt them?
1. Somewhere

Somewhere

**Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia or Within Temptation.**

**Note: Spoken words that are in normal print are in a different language then English, **_**words that are italic are in English**_**.**

Arthur Kirkland let out a sigh as he turned the key in the lock, another failed date. This whole dating thing wasn't working for him. He really couldn't blame the other party, he was well aware that it was his fault the dates weren't working out. He couldn't stop thinking about the mysterious blond man that had been in his memories since he'd woken up three years prior with amnesia after being hit by a car, he knew somehow that he had loved the man before his accident. But in the past three years there had been no sign of the man or anyone that had known him before his accident, and no filed missing person's report either, Berwald checked that a few months after the accident. Yet Arthur couldn't seem to forget the man, and especially not when he tried to have a date with another man. After five times, Arthur wondered why he hadn't just given up on the whole dating scene, but he knew the answer to that as well. He was lonely, lonely for the comfort of love that his roommates had.

He turned the knob and stepped into the dark hallway that lead to the common area of the four bedroom apartment. His roommate Berwald Oxenstiera had money, he didn't talk about it very much, and Arthur didn't ask. The light in the kitchen was on and Arthur could see the silver haired boy sitting at it. Eric was his youngest roommate, barely nineteen years old. He was going to college in Copenhagen for some kind of engineering, the kid was a genius and could talk circles around Arthur if he so felt like it. But Eric was also very quiet, he had autism and communicating with people was tough for him. "How was your date?" Eric inquired his voice monotone and to someone who didn't know him would mistake his question for apathy. But Arthur knew after living with him for three years if he didn't want to know he wouldn't ask.

"Bad. That stupid blond won't stay out of my head." Arthur growled grabbing the seat across the table from Eric. The silver haired boy's face remained impassive as Arthur laid his head on the table face down.

"I'm sorry."

"'S not your fault." Arthur muttered, his voice muffled by the wooden table.

"Have you talked to Berwald about it?" Arthur shook his head. Berwald, the oldest of Arthur's roommates had been the first person Arthur met after waking up. He had been an intern at the hospital then. Now Berwald had a private psychologist practice and Arthur had been his first patient helping Arthur try to regain his memories and deal with the void that had been created in Arthur's head from their absence. After three years, Arthur could say that he was perfectly healthy mentally and usually physically, in fact beside his failure in romance Arthur's life was going smoothly. He had taken night classes to finish secondary school, he couldn't remember if he had finished it or not up, until about six months ago and now he was working in a small café in downtown Copenhagen as well as taking online classes with an American university. Life was going well for him, and his roommates, all five of them, were really, really nice.

"No, didn't think it was worth it." Arthur said picking his head up and shrugging. "Why are you still up, don't you have classes in the morning."

"I'm waiting for Nicholas to text me." Eric said, there was a small gleam in his purple eyes that told Arthur how much he cared for the brunette boy that he was seeing.

"Ah, well I'm headed off to bed, maybe I'll wake up in the morning and it will have been all just a dream." Arthur knew he was wishful thinking, but his date tonight had been just that bad. He had called the other man Francis; he didn't even know a Francis, sounded Froggy though. He stood up and continued deeper into the apartment till he reached his bedroom, it was right across the hall from Mattias and Lukas's room and they were busy tonight if the noise coming out of the room were anything to judge by. He let out a small irritated groan, those two could rival rabbits.

His room was the smallest bedroom but it was in no means lacking, he had a very comfortable loft bed and underneath that was a small couch that he would sit and draw on every day in his sketch pad. Beside the bed was a small nightstand with a lamp on it as well as a photograph of Arthur and his five roommates taken at one of the nearby beaches. Denmark had a lot of beaches being a peninsula, and a couple of islands and all that. Berwald and Tino, Berwald's Finnish fiancé, often talked about taking a boat ride around the coast of Sweden to where Berwald's grandparents lived and going on a vacation there. Berwald was from Sweden, though he had grown up going between Copenhagen and Stockholm due to his father's work. Arthur didn't know what Berwald's work was, he just knew that at one point Berwald had been expected to take over the family business and that his very tall, stoic friend had a small falling out with him about it. There was a small book case near the door filled with books and other little knickknack's Arthur had collected in the past three years he'd been living here. It was a cozy place and he enjoyed spending a lot of his time in the room that had come to represent him.

He picked up his sketch book off of the couch and climbed up the ladder to his bed to leaf through the many sketches he had drawn. Many of them were of the mysterious blond doing different things. One of Arthur's favorite's was one of the blond cooking, he looked so natural doing it and he wondered if he'd watched the blond do it often. There was also a sketch of the blond man with a girl who looked similar to him, a relative most likely, he wasn't sure he'd just seen them in his mind and couldn't make it leave. He also had pictures drawn of his roommates, Berwald as Viking protecting Tino, the skyline of Copenhagen he could see from his bedroom window, Lukas practicing his violin and Mattias playing the cello beside him, Eric staring absent mindedly out of a window. In some ways Arthur was glad for his accident; it had led him to meeting five interesting guys that had become his family despite that the only two actually related were Eric and Lukas who were brothers. Smiling to himself Arthur pulled the pencil out of the spirals and flipped the book open to the next empty page and began his newest sketch.

"Waffles!" Mattias shouted the next morning pulling Arthur away from his slumber that he had been thoroughly enjoying, it had been about the blond man and some other people from his past, but now he couldn't remember any of it. Dreams like these were what frustrated Arthur the most about his amnesia, he hadn't lost any of the memories he just couldn't access them at will, but they were there he knew it. "Get up, Arthur, Tino made waffles." Arthur let out a large groan at the boisterous Dane and his love for waffles.

Mattias Koheler was a spiky haired dirty blond Dane who was obnoxiously loud, and though he had a serious side he rarely let people see it. He reminded Arthur of somebody he just couldn't remember who. He annoyed Arthur a lot and often times had to be reigned his by his sardonic lover Lukas. Both of which were sitting around the table Arthur had been lamenting to Eric the night before at, Mattias was chowing down on the waffles made by the peite blond who stood in front of the waffle maker in the kitchen Tino Vainamonen. Lukas on the other hand was quietly sipping coffee, his waffles half eaten.

"Good morning, Arthur." Tino chirped with a friendly smile, he was the polar opposite of his Swedish lover. Where Berwald was stern and stoic, Tino was friendly and happy, another point for the argument that opposites attract.

"Morning," Arthur replied sliding into the seat beside Lukas trying to ignore all they syrup the Dane was getting all over the table. He looked around for the other two members of the household who were missing.

"Berwald had to go to the office early this morning." Lukas explained, his voice was almost as monotone as his brother. "Eric is still sleeping, apparently he and Nicholas were up very late last night talking to one another." Arthur nodded. "How was your date?"

"Awful, I don't think I'm cut out for the whole dating scene." Arthur lamented his head in his hands.

"Noschense" Mattias said his mouth still full of waffles.

"Don't talk with your mouth full." Lukas said not even looking at his lover. Mattias immediately assumed a kicked puppy look that Lukas then promptly ignored. These two were even more proof that opposites attract Mattias was extremely playful and Lukas always seemed to be so serious.

"Don't give up so easily." Tino said encouragingly as he set down a plate full of waffles in front of Arthur before sitting down beside him a plate of waffles in front of him as well. "Love doesn't come immediately, it takes time. I certainly wasn't in love with Berwald the first time I met him."

"You thought he was trying to kidnap you when he offered to take you home." Mattias said with a laugh. Arthur shook his head at the Dane's jibe. Mattias and Berwald clashed a lot, probably because of their clashing personalities, but sometimes it seemed as if there was more to their arguments then just Mattias being an idiot.

"You're one to talk." Lukas murmured and the Dane's face fell.

"I called him Francis, I don't know a Francis. Do any of you know a Francis?" Arthur said butting back into the conversation.

"Nope," Mattias said his exuberance returning without too much damper, whatever Lukas had meant had been put out of his mind for the time being. The pale blond Nord shook his head as well.

"My sister Sharon, works with a Francis." Tino said thoughtfully, "But other than that, no. It's not a common Nord name."

"It doesn't matter, fact is I ruined yet another date. That stupid blond wouldn't stay out of my head." Arthur growled, stabbing a piece of waffle and bringing it to his mouth.

"What did the waffle do to you?" Mattias asked, Arthur ignored him.

"That's the third one I've messed up because he won't stay out of my head. It's as if my brain saying that I can't be with them because I'm supposed to be with him."

"The heart remembers what the brain forgets." Lukas said.

The table was quiet for a few minutes before Arthur spoke again. "Do you think he's out there wondering where I am?"

"I can't tell you that." Lukas said, Arthur knew that his family wanted him to find love almost as much as he did, they wanted him to be happy.

"So… how about that football game last night on tv." Mattias said trying to break the atmosphere as he scratched back of his head. "I enjoyed it, did you Lukas?

"Mattias, you were the only one who watched it." Tino pointed out and suddenly the table burst into laughter, even Lukas who hardly every laughed was laughing alongside the other three and the tension had officially defused from the table. Still laughing Mattias stood up and pecked Lukas on the cheek.

"Well I've still got work to get to." He said, Mattias did something in the world of business, Arthur couldn't understand how that whole realm worked yet and doubted he ever would. Even after only working there for a year the Dane was already working his way through the ranks and was when he had first gotten the job had said something about earning his money legitimately which made Arthur wonder about his friend's background.

"See you later then." Lukas said also standing up, he picked up both his and Mattias's plates as the tall Dane attempted to put his tie on.

"Well I don't have work till one." Arthur said, "But I should go take a shower." Tino nodded and smiled at him.

Alfred sighed as he walked into the café, the story had been a bust, a waste of his time. He should be back in Russia with Tatiana, where the real action was happening not wasting his time in Copenhagen to see if the Koehler crime syndicate really was going to attack the Oxenstierna like his boss suspected. He loved being a journalist, he really did, he just wished that his boss would let him have more time writing the stories he wanted to write and not what he thought would gain more attention. Who really actually cared if there was a crime war going on in Copenhagen when Russia was once again on the verge of a revolution. Aw, well he was here now and he might as well make the best of it. He was only going to be here for a week and if nothing happened well he wasn't the one paying for a plane ticket back to Russia.

"Hi, how can I help you?" an Asian chick asked as he sat down, Alfred blinked for a minute trying to remember what little Danish he knew. "_Sorry, tourist huh?_" the girl said in English with a small smile. "_I should go get Arthur, his English is better than mine._" Arthur, Alfred tried not to raise his hopes that it would be Arthur. His cousin. Arthur had left them in the worst time possible, well so did he, a voice in Alfred's head told him. He had been heading to Russia during the whole mess when Lovino was shot and saved from the whore house. He still couldn't believe though that Arthur would just leave everyone like that. Though Alfred guessed that being raped did strange stuff to your mind.

A man walked out from behind the counter with the Asian chick, he had large blond eyebrows, straw hair and emerald green eyes just the way Alfred remembered him. But the blond did not remember him, there was no look of recognition in Arthur's eyes and Alfred wondered what had happened to him. He turned around without a word and walked out of the café leaving behind two very confused workers.

Pulling out his phone he dialed a number on his speed dial and put it up to his ear. "_Come on, pick up. Damnit this is important_." He swore as he heard the familiar voicemail. "_Francis, this is Alfred, I found him_."

_But one thing's for sure,  
You're always in my heart._

_I'll find you somewhere_

_I'll keep on trying until my dying day.  
I just need to know  
Whatever has happened  
The truth will free my soul_

**Author's Note (The part of the story where the author comes out and writes a silly note): I'm back (like a bad penny) with the sequal to Russian Sunflower. If you're new I say welcome and if you've read the Russian Sunflower I say welcome back. If you haven't read the Russian Sunflower I think you'll be able to follow along English Rose without too much issues, it all has to get explained to Arthur at some point so you can find out then or you can read The Russian Sunflower which is a Spamano/FrUk story. I hope you enjoy English Rose.**_  
_


	2. Third Bar

Third Bar

**Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia or Snow Patrol.**

**Note: **words that are being spoke in normal font are in another language.

_Words that are being spoken in italicized font are in English._

Francis smiled to himself as he took in a whiff of the bakery he had just walked in, nothing beat the smell of fresh cooked bread in Paris. He'd been living in ancient city for now almost two and a half years, finishing off college at a Parisian university for theatre and now he worked for a Shakespearean stage company in England. The commute was a bit of a hassle, and sometimes he'd have to rent a hotel room on the other side of the Channel to make sure he could make it to practice on time if it started early in the morning. But he loved his job, he loved acting, especially Shakespeare, and even being an understudy was a just a dream come true to him.

Monique was now in her sophomore year of college in Rome and had met a boy named Marcello who she was now dating. According to Monique he had been the first boy she had ever trusted with the truth behind her past and he never judged her for it. Francis had yet to meet him and he was sure that his little sister had done so on purpose. He would meet him one day, Monique couldn't hide him forever.

"Can I help you, Monsieur." The lady behind the counter asked, she was in her mid-forties to early fifties and owned the bakery with her husband. They had a very good system going, she worked the counter and he baked seeing as she couldn't bake all too well and he wasn't a people person. Francis had picked up on all of this in the past two and a half years he had been coming to this bakery every day to pick up breakfast.

"I'll have the usual, Madame." He said flashing her a smile that made all women end up with a light blush on their cheeks. "How's business?"

"It's going well, thank you. How's the acting going, I'm sure that helps you pick up loads of girls." She said smiling; Francis felt his smile almost slip off of his face and destroying the façade he had worked so hard to build up around himself. Most people thought that he was the happiest man in the world, he had a great job, he was smart and handsome, he had loads of money, and the ladies loved him. But three years ago Francis lost his whole world, again, the second love of his life disappeared out of his hospital room with only a note saying goodbye. No one had heard from Arthur Kirkland since.

The lady behind the counter handed him a paper brown bag containing the coffee cake and croissant he ordered every morning and a paper cup filled with vanilla coffee. "_Merci_," Francis said taking the items out of her hands and handing her his plastic credit card that had a seemingly never ending supply of money on it.

Francis was glad that he had a day off from play practice, in two days he was heading to tour around Europe and so the crew and actors had been given time off to pack and relax before the trip starting in Madrid and ending in Copenhagen. Even though he was only an understudy, he too had felt the brunt of the stress actors had as well as the crew members as he helped out with them too. He sat down on a bench in one of the many parks that Paris was famous for and ate the breakfast he had just bought. Children chased each other in the grass and around the trees enjoying the last warm days of fall. Parents chatted among themselves about their children and the latest gossip of the city. Despite being surrounded by all the people, Francis felt alone, more alone then he had ever been, but he could not leave his self-imposed exile from his friends. They were all moving on with their lives and he felt himself stuck in a rut and far behind them in the road of life.

Sighing, Francis stood up, having a pity party for himself would get him nowhere and neither would thinking about Arthur. In fact he'd probably just slide back a few feet if he thought about Arthur for too long. He perused through the Parisian streets trying to find a motive for why he had stepped out for a morning jaunt in the first place. He shied away from areas like the Eiffel Tower and other tourist attractions to avoid the couples enjoying their honeymoon or a long awaited vacation.

After meandering around the city for nearly an hour Francis decided to head back to his apartment and pack for the upcoming tour. This would be his first real tour with the acting company. In the past four months since he had joined he had only done plays on stage in England and always as the understudy. This was his first time as the understudy for the main character though; he loved the character of Hamlet, the betrayal and deception of the story, the genius of it. Monique had promised to see the play when they came to Rome even though her older brother wouldn't actually most likely play the role of Hamlet when she saw it. Well it was a step in the right direction; he wouldn't be the understudy forever. He frowned as his apartment door swung open, a suitcase that definitely didn't belong to him was sitting in the foyer.

"Hello?" He asked on his guard as he walked into his apartment.

"Frannie!" Monique said hugging him as she jumped up from where she had been sitting at his kitchen table. "Where were you?"

"Getting breakfast and enjoying the city." Francis said with a smile glad to see his sister. "What are you doing here?"

"We had a long weekend, and you said you wanted to meet Marcello, so here we are." Monique stepped away from her brother to stand beside the tan man who also sat at his table. He had tan skin and light brown hair with a curl that looked like the ones Feliciano and Lovino sported, maybe it was an Italian thing, Francis thought with a shrug.

"It is nice to meet Monique's favorite brother." Marcello said standing up to shake Francis's hands.

"I better be her favorite brother." Francis playfully growled at his sister earning a giggle from her. How nice it was to hear something that for four long years he thought he would never hear again. "It is nice to meet you too, Marcello." Francis sat down at the table across from Marcello and beside his sister. "You are a very lucky guy to be dating my sister, but I must warn you Monique has many people who would wait in line to make your life miserable if you do anything to harm her at all." The tanned man paled slightly and Francis could see the warning look in his sister's eyes, but as her older brother he felt obligated to give the Italian the warning. "I gave Gilbert the same spiel when he began to take an interest in Matthew." Monique chuckled slightly at that.

"I understand why you are protective of Monique, more than most older brothers would be, but I promise I would never hurt her on purpose." Marcello said taking Monique's hand as he spoke. "I want to protect her as well." Francis could see the love and determination in the Italian's eyes that he had once seen in his own eyes for a very different person.

"Excuse me, I have to pack for my trip. You're welcome to make yourself at home." Francis said pushing his chair away from the table. "It shouldn't take me too long and then I'll show you around Paris, you'll get the special tour from a local."

He was almost done packing when his sister knocked on the door. "Are you okay?" she asked sitting down on the bed beside his black carpeted suitcase he was folding clothes into.

"Yeah." Francis said patting down the white t-shirt he had just folded and placed in the suitcase.

"_There is no sign of Arthur anywhere in this house. It's as if he never existed in your life._" Monique said switching to English her voice concerned and slightly upset. Her blue eyes raged with a spark she had never lost, not even when she had lived in a nightmare day and night.

"_I can't think of him, when I do- I'm trying to move on Monique, I'm trying to put my life back together. He left, he left me, he left Alfred, he left everybody and for reasons that are unknown to me. Obviously he has no desire to ever contact me again._" Francis said his voice monotone and his eyes flickered to the dresser where he had hidden the letter Arthur had left for him at the hospital, it was nearly torn up from being folded and unfolded so many times during the past three years since Arthur's departure from their lives. The pictures Feliciano had taken of them when they had given Arthur a grand tour of Montreal also resided in the drawer beside the letter and a picture of Jeanne, Francis's first love.

"_What if he can't for whatever reason?_" Monique asked and Francis found his anger rising, couldn't Monique drop the subject? It was painful and unnecessary.

"_Is there a reason to all this? To your trip, to your questions?_" Francis hissed, Monique took a deep breath before speaking again.

"_Alfred called me, he said he you never answered his phone call. He said he thought he saw Arthur in Copenhagen, but he wasn't sure._"

"Monique, I can't- I won't go off chasing fairy tales, let me move on, please." Francis walked around the room gathering the last articles that he would need to pack. He didn't want to hear about Arthur or where he could be.

"But what if Arthur is in Copenhagen? Are you just going to let him walk out of your life forever?"

"He already did that." Francis said slamming the cover to his suitcase down on top of it. He would not let himself build hope that Arthur was in reach to him.

"You're a coward, you know that."

"Not all of us have your kind of strength." Francis replied somberly, memories of Jeanne and his mother's deaths hitting him and the strength he had possessed then that had helped him get through it all. Arthur had taken a lot of Francis with him it seemed.

"You're stronger then you give yourself credit for." Monique said before she walked out of Francis's bedroom. He could hear Marcello and Monique talking to each other outside the bedroom door.

"I'm worried about him, he's lost so much in the past couple of years, he doesn't talk to his friends that often. If he keeps this up I'm afraid I'll lose him." Monique said, Francis paled at her words, he thought he that if he avoided his friends he could somehow prevent them from knowing just how much pain he was in. It wasn't a sharp pain anymore, just a dull ache in his chest where his heart had been ripped out. Francis almost laughed at himself for how much he sounded like that dreadful heroine from that vampire book series Jeanne had loved when that awful vampire she called a boyfriend left her. The werewolf would have been the better choice.

"He'll be okay," Marcello replied, "I think you worry more about him then he does for you sometimes." Francis almost snorted at that comment, there was no way Monique worried more about him then he did about her. He was the big brother it was his job to worry.

Suddenly the telephone rang making Francis jump, he reached over and grabbed the phone off of his night stand. "This is Francis Bonnefoy."

"_English please,_" a male voice in a British accent said,

"_Oh sorry, hi Dalton, what can I do for you?_" Francis said, Dalton Hitts was the actor playing Hamlet in the play company, he'd only been with the acting troope for about two years now but he was extremely talented and Francis felt extremely lucky to be able work under him.

"_I'm going to need you to fill in for me._"

"_Quoi_?" Francis almost shouted,

"_It won't be a problem will it? I know you know all the lines and you've practiced the character. I broke my leg walking down some stairs._" It was no secret that Dalton was accident prone but breaking his leg right before the big tour, Mr. McCune would not be happy. Joseph A. McCune was the leader of the acting company Francis worked for and he was not an easy man to please.

"_I understand, will you still tour with us?_"

"_Doc doesn't want me to, he says I need to stay on this side of the Channel till it heals._"

"_Kay._"

"_Break a leg_." Francis snorted at the irony of Dalton's words and listened to the dial tone as the English man hung up before him. He was going to play the lead now, the realization hit him like a hundred kilogram sack.

"_Mon Dieu_!"

"What's wrong?" Monique said running into his room with Marcello on her heels.

"That was Dalton, the lead actor in Hamlet, he broke his leg. I- I'm going to play the role of Hamlet on tour." Francis said sitting on the bed trying to wrap his brain around it. Suddenly he wasn't sure if he was ready to have a lead role in a play that he would perform in front of hundreds of people. There was no way he could convince all of them that he was Hamlet and that his uncle had murdered his father or that he was in love with the fair Ophelia.

"That's wonderful; I can't wait to see you perform." Monique said clapping her hands in delight. Francis smiled knowing that at least one person would enjoy the show no matter what, and after the show she'd proudly boast that it was her brother who was playing Hamlet no matter how poorly he performed.

"Thank you," he said standing up, "I did promise you a tour of the city of love from a resident right? Well, we'd better be off if we're to see everything."

_I hang my coat up in the first bar  
There is no peace that I have found so far  
The laughter penetrates my silence  
As drunken men finds flaws in science_

_Their words mostly noises  
Ghost with just voices  
Your words in my memory  
Are like music to me_

_I'm miles from where you are  
I lay down on the cold ground  
I, I pray that something picks me up  
And sets me down in your warm arms._

**Author's Note (The part of the story where the author comes out and writes a silly note): Well here we are at Chapter two and we get to see Francis. I first heard this song with a FrUk video while writing The Russian Sunflower and knew I had to write a chapter in My English Rose about them. Arthur isn't really in this chapter but that's beside the point. As for the Monaco/Seborgea pairing, that comes from one of Himaruya's Christmas webcomic last year where Seborgea asks Monaco out on a date. I've liked the pairing ever since. I would like to wish everyone, even if you're not American, a Happy Thanksgiving.**


	3. No Lights

No Lights, No Lights

**Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia or Florence and the Machines.**

**Note: Spoken in normal fonts are in a different language, **_**italics words are in English**_** unless otherwise specified.**

Arthur sat on a park bench in one of Copenhagen's many parks right across from Tivoli Gardens, a magnificently beautiful amusement park built over a century ago, he really enjoyed going inside and just sitting down in one of the restaurants and sketching people in it, or the flowers that he could see. Right now he was sketching the outside gates of the magnificent park or at least that was what he had intended to draw, but now instead of the gates taking up most of the space a person standing underneath the gates did. He had cropped hair that stuck up in a cow lick right above his forehead, the obnoxious one that Mattias reminded him of. Recently he had been drawing a lot of these mysterious people and not just the blond man. Berwald wanted him to come in to his office to talk about them, to help him remember them. But Arthur wasn't so sure if he wanted to remember them or anything else about his past life, what if there was some dark secret that he was better off not knowing? Did he really want to mess up everything he'd worked so hard these past three years by remembering his past, what if he had killed somebody and had been a runaway fugitive, did he honestly want to know? But how could he live with himself not knowing who all the people were that swirled inside his head? How could he live without knowing if they truly existed or was he making them up in his mind?

Finishing up his sketch, Arthur blew some of the eraser crumbs off of the slightly rough cream colored paper before closing up the book and standing up off the bench, his butt was slightly sore from sitting for so long but the detail he was able to add to the sketch made it all the worthwhile. Now he had a decision to make that he had been putting off making in his head before. He could catch the train and go to Berwald's office like he was supposed to and talk to the stoic man about the people and try to find strategies to regaining his memories, or he could take a different train and head back to the apartment, a quiet, empty apartment, devoid of all his roommates that made trying to find somewhere peaceful a very, very difficult task if one wanted to stay in the apartment. Mattias was at work, Lukas had a performance coming up so he had to be at the Opera House, Eric was at school, Tino was out and about doing some shopping and Berwald was at his office. It was a very tempting choice, a very tempting choice indeed.

"Who's this?" Berwald asked pointing to a shadow in the corner of his picture of himself and the blond man sitting on a park bench.

"I don't know, the shadow scares me though." Arthur admitted, he rubbed his upper arms. "I see him in my darkest nightmares but I can't rember his face, just purple eyes." Berwald nodded writing something down on his pad. They had talked about the purple eyes before. They weren't the same shade as Tino's, they were more lavender and had a more child like look to them.

"When was the last time you had a nightmare with them?" Berwald looked over the rim of his glasses at Arthur which told the younger man that his roommate expected an honest answer and not the lie he was about to give him.

"Last week." Arthur gave in with a sigh, "They happen about once a week." The Swede jotted something down on his notepad. The taller man flipped a few pages through Arthur's sketch pad to his most recently drawn item.

"This is very good Arthur, do you know who he is?"

"He's the one Mattias reminds me of." Berwald's lips quirked into a small smile and then back down to a straight line in a blink of an eye, the blond flipped to the page before it. In one part of the page there was a group of people and on the other side was one person, a young man with a strange hair curl sticking out his right side.

"Why is he always alone?"

"I don't know." Arthur had never drawn the angry boy with anyone, he had tried before but it never felt right to Arthur and he wasn't sure why.

"That's okay." Berwald reassured him in his own stoic way. Arthur nodded, they had gone through the same routine at sessions for years now. At first it had just been the blond man, and Berwald had asked question after question about him as if somehow it would jog Arthur's memory. And slowly over the past three years he began to draw other people from his past life, or at least he thought they were from his past life, and then impressions began to come and Arthur could now give vague details about these people. He knew Berwald thought that regaining his memories might be an easier thing to do if there were people from his past around him but they'd never been able to identify any of the people in Arthur's drawings.

Arthur looked around the light green painted room, he sat on a burgundy sofa while Berwald sat across from him in a leather chair. There was a small desk in the corner of the room with a picture of Berwald and Tino on it and a laptop where Berwald would type up his notes after his sessions. He never let Arthur see what those notes were on him, said it was confidential and what not. Not that Arthur really wanted to know what Berwald thought, the notes probably didn't look that much different from when Arthur first started his sessions till now. He still hadn't regained his memories.

"Who's Francis?" Berwald asked, "Tino tells me you called your date a few days ago Francis." The stoic blond clarified as Arthur gave him a confused look. Arthur wondered if it went against the Hippocratic Oath to be your patient's roommate.

"I don't know, someone I knew I guess." Arthur said with a shrug.

"Is this Francis?" Berwald pointed to the angry man he always drew alone. Arthur immediately shook his head. "What about him, is he Francis?" he flipped the page in the sketch book to the picture of the gates to the Tivoli Gardens with the over exuberant man standing in front of them.

"No,"

"What about the blond man, is he Francis?" Arthur opened his mouth to say no and then shut it again.

"I'm not sure." Francis… that could fit the blond man, it didn't sound wrong but Arthur wasn't sure it sounded right either.

_** The blond man stood on the bow of the ship barely holding onto the rope that was the only thing preventing him from falling over the edge. He was saying something, but Arthur couldn't hear him over the wind of the sea. He looked like an angel with his white shirt billowing behind him from where it had become untucked from his blue breeches. "How could you do this to me, Arthur?" He asked as Arthur got closer. What had he done to the blond man. "How could you do this to me? Do you see what you've brought me to do?" Arthur reached his hand out the blond man and opened his mouth to tell him that he wasn't sure what he had done to wrong the man. But no words would come out and he found himself opening and closing like a fish trying to take in water on a boat. And then the man leaned back, a small smile on his face as his sapphire blue eyes looked directly into Arthur's emerald green. "Au-revoir, my English Rose." And he fell backwards into the stormy sea below and Arthur could hear someone shouting a name only to realize it was him.**_

_** "FRANCIS!" It had come out of his mouth on pure instinct and he ran to the edge of the boat to see the splash the taller man had made and without too much thought, Arthur grabbed rope so that he wouldn't lose his ship and jumped into the water below after the other man.**_

_** The water was a greenish blue color as Arthur tried to find the man, Francis, that was what Arthur had called him. And then he saw the movement of Francis's hand and Arthur kicked himself in that direction not letting go of the rope. It looked as if he was caught in the entanglements of kelp. "Francis." Arthur said as he reached down to grab the man's hand. But their fingers slipped against one another. "Grab my hand." Francis shook his head.**_

_** "How could you do this to me?" he asked again. Arthur felt the sting of betrayal, but pushed it aside, he had to save him. This man was important to him. Pushing aside his feelings of doubt Arthur reached down again and grabbed Francis's waist. The man thrashed about, grabbing on to the kelp as if he didn't want to be rescued by Arthur but the stubborn Brit didn't pay him any mind as he kicked upward and back towards the boat.**_

And then it was over and Arthur was in his bedroom, he felt himself trying to catch his breath and he glanced down at his clock. It was five in the morning. "Francis." He said to himself. "Francis." The blond man was Francis, and Francis had been with him since the beginning. "Francis what?" he asked himself as he climbed down the ladder, his mind racing from his dream. _"How could you do this to me?"_ Francis's haunting voice asked him over and over. What had he done to the man, how had he hurt him? Was it the accident, or had it been something before then? Arthur clutched his head trying to figure out the inter-moil inside his head.

"What's wrong with me?" Arthur moaned to himself.

* * *

Alfred F. Jones smiled to himself as he walked out of the dark alley way in Copenhagen's less then savory district, so there really was a war heating up between Oxenstierna and Kohler, and he would be right in the front row. He'd have to call Tatiana and tell her he would be gone for a little while longer, surely she would understand. He hadn't seen Arthur again, but he also hadn't dared to go back to the café yet either. What if Arthur didn't want to be found again, he hadn't given any indication these past three years that he was ready to see everyone again. It didn't matter, he needed to focus on the crime war heating up between the two largest crime syndicates in Northern Europe outside of Russia.

"You should be more careful, you don't want to get on either of their radars with your constant questioning of people." Said Alfred's photographer an Indian man by the name of Rajesh, Alfred let out a small snort, Alfred was anything but careful and Rajesh knew that. How many bad situations had they ended up in together? They'd always been able to pull through, but Alfred understood the warning, reporting on the revolution in Russia was different from reporting on a crime war. He wouldn't be the first reporter to be killed on duty for being too nosy about certain subjects. Alfred's left hand drifted slightly over the gun holster he kept on him since nearly being killed by raiders in the Sahara a few years back. Being a freelance journalist would do that to you.

"Careful got it," Alfred said sending the dark man one of his famous 'hero smiles'. "We now know that Kohler is planning a small raid on one of his own drug houses and making it look like Oxenstierna did it, we wouldn't have found that out if we'd been careful would we."

"I don't trust anybody in this area." Rajesh said honestly, "Can we go back to the hotel now?"

"Wimp," Alfred muttered under his breath but nodded anyway. There wouldn't be too much more to find out anyway tonight. Tomorrow he'd go back out and scower the underbelly of Copenhagen looking for his story. If he wrote the story right he could win a Pulitzer, he'd like that. He'd get known throughout the journalistic world if he did that.

_No light, no light  
In your bright blue eyes  
I never knew daylight could be so violent  
A revolution in the light  
Of day  
You can chose was stays  
And what fades away._

_And I'd do anything  
To make you stay  
No light, no light  
Tell me what you want me to say._

**Author's Note (the part of the story where the author comes out and writes a silly note):  
Meant to update this yesterday. Sorry, got distracted. And sorry this took so long, but I got back from the Thanksgiving break only to find myself swamped with the play i was doing at school. And then Midterms. But we survived the Apocalypse so glad to see everyone's okay. Merry Christmas.**


	4. Imaginary

**Imaginary**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia or Evennesance**

**Note: Spoken words are in another language besides English **_**italized **_**will be English unless otherwise stated.**

"Frannie!" Monique shouted, greeting him at the luggage carousel in the Fiumiciano Airport, behind her was Marcello looking sheepish, with his hand in his pocket and the hood of a sweatshirt, with the words _Bite me_ written across it, covering his coppery hair, at his girlfriend's over enthusiastic greeting of her brother.

"Monique," Francis said with a huge smile, kissing his sister's cheeks. "How's your studies going?" Unlike her casually dressed boyfriend, Monique was dressed in a button up purple blouse and a white skirt that swayed whenever she walked, and she wore a smile that made Francis feel as if some of the weight that had been weighing on him was lifted.

"Good, I just finished a class in Art History that required me to visit many of Rome's Art Museums, I wish you could stay longer and see more of the city." Monique said as Francis picked up his luggage from the carousel. Normally, he would have ridden the tour bus with the rest of the cast, but he had special permission to visit his sister during their performance in Rome.

"And how are you, Marcello?" Francis asked turning to the other man.

"Fine, school is well." Marcello replied curtly.

"I hear the show in Zurrick went well." Monique said, Francis nodded. The tour had started in London where their theatre was and then they had crossed the channel to the French city Bordeaux and then they had traveled into Spain and then back to France to perform in Marsilles and Strausburg, and then they went into Switzerland to perform in Zurrick. The company did European tours every two or three years performing the master of English playwriting's work. "Did you think about what I told you?" Francis sighed. Did she have to bring this up now, couldn't they have one visit where his former lover wasn't brought up. He knew she cared a lot about Arthur as he had taken care of her while she was in the Russian Sunflower but couldn't she see that he didn't want to talk about him?

"Monique, not now." He said as they made their way through the lobby of the airport. He didn't want to have this fight again. She wanted him to checkout Alfred's lead in Copenhagen, she had made that vastly clear when they'd fought over the phone last week, but he didn't want to disrupt a poor man's life by badgering him with questions. Especially if Alfred really had seen Arthur.

"So, are do you want a tour around Rome or do you just want to relax for the day before you perform tomorrow?" Marcello asked cutting into the tenuous discussion between the siblings. Francis sent him a silent but grateful look, there were few people Monique would listen to, she was very strong willed like their mother, but the boy walking beside them might just be one of them. Perhaps he could ask Marcello to tell her to lay off him about Arthur.

"I wouldn't mind a tour around Rome; I have never been here before." Francis said with his smile that could charm the panties off of most women. It was a false smile, but it fooled most people and it worked for him.

"A tour it is," Marcello said with a slight nod of his head as he waved down a taxi.

As they walked around Rome, Francis began to realize why his sister had fallen in love with the city. It truly was a city that spanned for over two millennia from the Parthenon and the Coliseum to the beautiful Renaissance sculptures and churches to the more modern buildings everyone seemed to forget about due to the city's history. It reminded him of Paris and London more than his former home in Montreal and Ottawa, they were much younger cities in comparison to the ancient ones on this content. Everything about Europe seemed older then North America and it was a welcomed change when Francis moved back to Paris three years ago. He had wanted the old buildings, the ones that inspired people to write books and wonder about the people who had lived there hundreds of years ago. This city was older than his beloved Paris, not by much and you couldn't really tell unless you knew its history.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Monique asked as they stood in the old Roman Forum. Over the tops of some of the lower buildings they could see the top of the coliseum peeking out like a titan watching over time. This city had made his sister alive again after the Russian Sunflower, even though she hadn't lost her spirit in that hellhole, she had lost her youth and her carefreeness that she had had as a child. "I wish I had time to show you the library. There's so many books, I can't imagine there's a bigger library anywhere in the world." His sister carried on talking not noticing her brother in his deep thoughts.

"The United States Library of Congress boasts to be the biggest library in the world." Francis replied watching the wind play with her dirty blond braided hair. He had thought for four years that he'd never see her smile again, never see her blue eyes light up as she got excited or watch her curl up and read a book, he even enjoyed watching her scowl, the way she put her hands on her hips when she was upset, she looked just like their _Maman_ before she died.

"Whatever." Francis laughed at her, she tried to keep a straight face and not laugh as well but she failed.

Francis watched Marcello wander around the forums below doing some kind of rubbings with a piece of white paper and a crayon like one might do at a grave site or something. Monique never took her eyes off of him as if, if she did he would disappear and she would never see him again. "He asked me to marry him." She said and Francis glanced at her left ring finger for the first time during the whole trip, but there wasn't a ring on it.

"You said no?" Francis asked surprised.

"What if one day he wakes up and he realizes that he doesn't want a used girl, a whore? What then? If we get married he'll be stuck in a marriage he doesn't want to be in. I don't want to do that to him." Monique said and she suddenly looked older then her twenty-one years of age. "The way we are now he can leave whenever he wants. He won't feel obligated to stay by my side." She gave her brother a pitiful half smile.

"You can't do this to yourself. You can't live in the what ifs, you should marry him. You deserve him. He's a nice guy and he's not going to leave you just because you were forced into prostitution. If he was he would have done it long ago. He loves you, Monique; he wants to take care of you." Francis said grabbing his sister's hand and squeezed. And as he told her all those word of encouragement he could also understood where she was coming from but he couldn't see Marcello being that type of person, to just leave because he didn't want an ex-prostitute for a girlfriend, he wasn't Arthur, he wouldn't just leave her.

"You really think so?" Monique asked a hint of desperation in her voice, Francis knew that Monique wanted to get married; she had always wanted to get married ever since she was a little girl. Sometimes when they were little she'd force Antonio to play "Wedding" with her where he was the groom and Francis would give her away and Feliciano was the priest. Lovino would just watch from the sidelines scowling, Monique liked to call him a meanie head and they didn't get along too well as children. Before she had left to live in France with their grandparents she had told him that she was afraid that now she'd never get married because no one would ever want someone that had been through what she had been through. At that time Francis hadn't been sure what to tell her as he was still reeling over his loss of Arthur, but now she had found someone, someone who truly cared for her and understood that her abduction and forced prostitution wasn't her fault.

"Yes," He watched her face light up and then she jumped up and ran down the hill to where Marcello was wandering. Francis watched as she ran up to him and then after a few seconds she wrapped her arms around his neck as he spun her around. He could see the smile on both of their faces and he found a big one working its way on his face. At least someone in their family would be happy, their mother was dead, their father a drunk, and he was nothing more than a broken man who hid his true feelings behind a façade and tried to be people he was not. But she would get her happy ending and he couldn't ask God for anything more. And then Marcello put her down and kissed her and Francis became really glad that he had brought earplugs so he could sleep on the plane because he would probably need them that night. And through the clear air that had settled on the area he heard a sound he hadn't heard in years, his sister's laugh. It was a beautiful sound, ringing like a bell and sounding so crisp and clean.

"_O, I die, Horatio; The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit: I cannot live to hear news from England; But I do prophesy the election lights On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice; So tell him, with the occurents, more and less, Which have solicited. The rest is silent._" Francis lay on the ground looking up into his friend Oliver's bright green eyes. Oliver played Hamlet's friend Horatio, he was a few years older than Francis and had been performing the works of Shakespeare much longer but he was by no means a snob about it to Francis. That was one thing Francis liked about working with this acting company, even those who had been performing for a while took the younger actors under their wings and tutored them in the art.

"_Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince."_ Oliver bent down and kissed Francis's brow. "_And flight of angels sing thee to thy rest! Why does the drum come hither?_" Oliver stood up after bending over Francis as he lay dying and looked over to stage left where Charles who was playing Fortinbras the Prince of Norway and a couple of fill in actors stood who were playing the prince's entourage.

"_Where is this sight?_" Charles asked walking on stage, his entourage following him. One thing Francis admired about the American actor was the way he held himself on stage. The man looked as if he could be the prince of Norway right then as he walked on the stage.

"_What is it ye would see?_" Oliver said the line with such anguish Francis half wondered to himself if the Brit knew what it was like to watch a friend die right in front of him. "_If aught woe or wonder, cease your search._"

"_This quarry cries on havoc. O proud death,_" Charles too bent down over Francis. "_What feast is toward thine eternal cell, That thou so many princes at a shot So bloodily hast struck?_" He stood up to be even with Oliver, his voice sounding angry as he looked over at some of the other actors who also lay "dead" on the stage.

"_The sight is dismal, And our affairs from England come too late:_" said one of the stand ins, "_The ears are senseless that should give us hearing, To tell him his commandment is fullfill'd, That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead: Where should we have our thanks?_"

"_Not from his mouth, Had it the ability of life to thank you:_" Oliver replied to the man defensively. Francis was really enjoying playing a dead man on stage and having everyone talk about him like he wasn't there. It was really entertaining. "_He never gave commandment for their death, But since, so jump upon this bloody question, You from the Polack wars, and you from England, Are here arrived give orders that these bodies High on stage be placed to view;_" He gestured to the uncle and his men who were dead. "_And let me speak to the yet unknowing world How these things came about: so shall you hear Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall'n on the inventors' reads: all this I can Truly deliver."_ Oliver looked at Charles as he spoke.

"_Let us haste to hear it, And call the noblest to the audience. For me, with sorrows I embrace my fortune:_" Charles put a hand on Oliver's back as if in some kind of condolence to the man. "_I have some rights of memory in this kingdom, Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me._"

"_Of that I shall have also cause to speak, And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more;_" He began to walk away from Francis's "body" as he spoke. "_But let this same be presently perform'd, Even while men's minds are wild; lest more mischance On plots and errors, happen._"

"_Let four captains Bear Hamlet, like a solider, on the stage;_" Charles said motioning to his men. Four of the fill ins lifted Francis up on their shoulders walking behind the two as they walked off the stage. "_For he was likely, had he been put on, To have proved most royally: and, for his passage, The soldiers' music and rites of war Speak loudly for him. Take up the bodies: such a sight as this Become the field, but here shows much amiss. Go, bid the soldiers, shoot._" The curtain closed with the other still dead on the stage. Francis was slowly lowered to the floor by the four he was carried off stage by as they did the curtain call.

Francis ran out first out of the whole cast being the star and everything and then would run out Sharon who played Ophelia, and then other members of the cast based on what role they had played throughout the play. Francis smiled as he grabbed the blond Finnish woman's hand to take a bow with her. Somewhere out in the audience his sister had just watched him perform and she was now standing up with the audience clapping and cheering them on and that somehow lifted a huge weight off of his shoulders.

"You were amazing out there, tonight." Monique gushed as she met him outside in the lobby area after the curtain call. "I never knew what an amazing actor you are." Francis shrugged sheepishly, acing was just something that came naturally to him, it wasn't something he could turn on or off. He liked it because even for a brief two hours he could imagine he was someone else, he could become that other person and Francis Bonnefoy didn't exist and all the pains of his life no longer existed. And in this imaginary world he was someone else, and that was the only thing that kept him going sometimes.

_Don't say I'm out of touch  
With this rampant chaos- your reality  
I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge  
The nightmare I built my own world to escape._

_In my field of paper flowers  
And candy clouds of lullaby  
I lie inside myself for hours  
And watch my purple sky fly over me._

Author's Note (the part of the story where the author comes out and writes a silly note): Happy New Years everybody. I had hoped to publish this two weeks ago, but I had family issues come up. Family can't live with them, can't live without them. Please review.


	5. Fairytale

**Fairytale**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia.  
Note: Words in normal font are in another language, words that are in italics are in English.**

"I got us tickets to see Sharon's show." Tino said at the breakfast table holding up six tickets to the Performing Arts Center where an English Shakespearean theatre troop were going to be performing Shakespeare's Hamlet.

"Sharon? As in your sister?" Arthur asked, spreading lingonberries jam onto his toast. He had never met Tino's older sister though he had heard a great deal about her. She looked a lot like Tino from what he had been told with his blond hair and light purple eyes, she worked as a stage actress in England where she met her fiancé David, they were getting married later this year.

"Yeah, she's playing Ophelia. She was telling me that the one actually playing Hamlet though isn't the one in the posters. I guess the original actor was in an accident and broke his leg a few days before the tour." Tino said taking a swig of his orange juice before carrying on with his sister's gossip. "The new actor's name is Francis, he lives in Paris and commutes to London to work. I told her that you had a thing for Frenchmen, Arthur, but she said she didn't know much about his personal life other then he seems very sad when he thinks no one is watching him." Tino babbled happily while Arthur mulled over the Finnish man's words. There must have been a thousand of Frenchmen named Francis, there was no way that this could be the Francis that held the answers to his past. But Arthur couldn't help but hope, ever since he had learned that the mysterious blond was a man named Francis that was all he could think about. He wanted to find Francis and find out what he had done to the man to make him so agonized. The man's haunting words from his dream a few weeks ago played in his head again _How could you do this to me?_

"Sounds like fun." Mattias agreed.

"Your English is terrible; you'd be bored half way through it." Lukkas commented not even looking at the spikey haired Dane.

"Nah, people die, even if I don't understand what they're saying, I'll understand what's going on." Mattias protested, "Besides your English isn't any better than mine."

"Yes, but I have class, you act like a child a social events." Lukkas responded, Mattias stuck his tongue out at the Nord. "Point proven." Erik let out a snort of amusement from where he sat on the other side of his brother.

"I wouldn't mind going to see it." Arthur said ignoring the verbal sparring that had commenced between Lukkas and Mattias, the Dane would be leaving soon to go to work anyway.

"Yeah, be nice to hear something in your mother tongue again, right?" Mattias asked, bumping elbows with the Brit.

"I guess," Arthur shrugged, "I've been hearing Danish for so long though…." He trailed off. He'd woken up, three years ago, understanding English and hardly any Danish. The first few weeks of living with the young intern, who had been there when he woke up, and his roommates had been awkward as he tried to pick up more Danish so that he would be able to communicate with them better. Berwald had acted as a translator most of the time, and Arthur had picked up Danish as fast as he could. Still those first months had been lonely even though he had been surrounded by people, not only had he been dealing with losing nineteen years' worth of memories, but he couldn't communicate with hardly anybody either. And finally after six months he was able to hold simple conversations with Mattias and Lukkas, it wasn't much, but it was a start. Now, Arthur wasn't sure he could discern English from Danish anymore; he very rarely used his mother tongue.

"Berwald told me that the one thing you can't truly forget is the language you were born with. Something about being a child and developing the language in your brain." Tino said trying to make Arthur feel better.

"Wow, that's cool. How did Berwald get so smart?" Mattias asked his light blue eyes lighting up with a childlike wonder only the Dane could pull off.

"Well Koehler, he paid attention in school unlike you who goofed around all the time." Lukkas replied.

"Well if we are going to this play I'm going to need a suit." Arthur said standing up from the breakfast table. In his three years of living with the Nords he had never had an occasion where he would have needed one. Trying to get a job at a local café certainly didn't require such a thing, and he was only in his second semester of the online college, no need to worry about job interviews yet.

"When is the play?" Lukkas asked, his head cocked to the side slightly, the small curl that came out from the back of his head was askew. The curl reminded Arthur of somebody… another mystery that would never be solved. If he knew where he had come from before Copenhagen he would go there, if only to find out who he had been.

"Tonight." Tino squeaked, his face going red in embarrassment. "I kept forgetting to ask you because something kept coming up."

"Well then, it's a good thing I have this afternoon off." Arthur said, "I'm looking for a suit."

"Ooo, I know a few good places." Tino said with a smile. "I'll help you." Arthur nodded; he would take any help he could get. Fashion and clothes were not his forte, why couldn't people just got to social events in jeans and sweater vests or khakis and a sweater vests, or a nice button up shirt?

His shift at the café went by slowly as his friend Mai wasn't there to talk constantly and make the time go by faster. Mai was from Tiwan and she was here in Copenhagen on a student visa studying medicine, from what Arthur had gleaned, Copenhagen had some of the best schools for medicine in the world, and some of the best up to date facilities too. Her boyfriend Leon lived in Hong Kong still doing something in the world of business like Mattias. But his shift ended eventually and Tino was there waiting for him right outside, "Hey," Tino chirped waving at Arthur to catch his attention as he walked outside the café.

"Okay, so where are we going?" Arthur asked as they set off down the street towards the downtown area of Copenhagen. Tall buildings, nearly skyscrapers, surrounded them as they walked but the tall buildings no longer made Arthur feel claustrophobic any more as they once did, now they reminded him of how they felt like home. Home. Arthur hadn't felt like he had a home in a long time, maybe he had never felt like he'd had a home before. It seemed like a strange concept… to not have a home, but it was one of those feelings that Arthur had that he didn't know how he knew he just did. Berwald said it was a good sign.

"A store," Tino said with an impish smile. The tiny Finn did remind Arthur of a sprite or an elf of some sort in ways that he wasn't quite sure. It was the light purple eyes probably, mixed with the light blond hair; it suited the Finn too. Arthur crossed his arms and let out a huff but didn't protest and allowed the Finn to drag him to whatever store he wanted to. It wasn't as if Tino wasn't bad company or anything.

The little men's dress store Tino dragged him into was more expensive then Arthur ever cared to spend on clothes. All the famous name brand Italian, French, American and Swedish designers were in this place. Arthur was a little afraid to touch the clothing as if like some expensive breakable item it would shatter if he was not careful with it. What would he do with an Armani suit after tonight? When would he ever use it again, it certainly wasn't the sort of suit you could go to a job interview, well maybe unless you were applying for a CEO position or something of the sort. "Well go on, try one on." Tino encouraged with one of his smiles that were hard to resist.

"Tino, really, what would I do with a suit like this?" Arthur asked holding up a black pinstripe Armani suit. "Wear it for one night and then hang it up and let it gather dust in the back of my closet?"

"You never know, you could always wear it on one of your dates." Tino said teasingly, "Don't worry about the future; you never know what the future has in store for you. Besides Berwald and I are paying."

Arthur raised his hand up to object, he couldn't allow Berwald or any of them for that matter to pay for an expensive suit for him, especially one he probably would never use again in his life. "No, no," But the look on Tino's face told him this was not an argument he was going to win. For such a little imp, he really was quite stubborn. "Fine," Arthur sighed glad that none of the sales people were rushing up to them and asking if they needed help, quite annoying that was.

"You're going to look handsome." Tino said clapping his hands at Arthur's choice of suits. With a roll of the eyes and a small grumble about going shopping with certain people, he made his way to a dressing room to know if the pinstriped Armani suit fitted him or would he need a rush fitting for it. Absentmindedly he wondered why exactly Tino knew about this place, it wasn't like Berwald was one for social events, especially not ones where Armani suits were involved. The giant, as gentle as he was, was socially awkward in his own ways and Arthur knew that Tino found that very enduring about the Swede.

The suit fit him for the most part. It could do with some hemming around the ankles and wrists but Arthur didn't have the patience to wait for such things to be done. And as Tino paid for the suit, the short man began to talk about an after party. "I hope you don't mind, Arthur, I was only trying to help but Sharon helped me set you up on a blind date with another one of the actors." Shock rolled through Arthur, Tino had set him up on a blind date? When had the Finn started to play Cupid? Arthur expected this kind of behavior from Mattias, not from the quite, pixie man in front of him.

"Why?" Was the only thing Arthur said. He wasn't angry; at least he didn't think he was angry. He just wasn't sure what exactly he was supposed to feel, Tino was only trying to help and it was no secret that Arthur kept fucking up his own love life. Maybe it was better if someone else intervened, obviously he needed help.

"Sharon says he doesn't date often and he's very nice." Tino said, "I think you'll like him." Arthur sighed; liking a date and not screwing it up were two very different things. Two very different things indeed.

"I'll give it a shot, but I don't know what will come of it, he more than likely lives in London." But there already was a smile on Tino's face telling Arthur the Finn hadn't heard the last part of his sentence and he saw no use in repeating himself, he would just have to see where tonight at the after party took him.

"How did you manage to get such good seats?" Mattias asked as they made their way to the center of the second row of seats in the Fine Arts Center where the Shakespearean Theater Company was performing. Around them the auditorium was filling up with Copenhagen's well to do. Arthur wondered if the company performed here often since this seemed to be a high society event.

"Sharon." Was Berwald response before he sat down in between Tino and Lukkas, Arthur was on the other side of Tino and Mattias sat on the other side of Lukkas. Only Eric hadn't come tonight, he had some excuse about studying and meeting up with his boyfriend. Arthur flipped open the program, his eyes scrolling through the list of actors and actresses trying to determine which one he had been set up on a blind date with tonight at the after party. And then the name jumped out at him like blaring red lights _Francis Bonnefoy_, him, the blond man. Arthur felt his breath hitch as he tried to figure out how to handle the situation, his past love (so he supposed) was here, he was an actor in this Shakespearean company and Arthur was here watching it and what was the odds of that? After three years of wondering and waiting, just as his memories were beginning to return he would start running into them. Whoever them were.

"Arthur, are you okay?" Tino asked as the house lights began to go dim and someone over the loud speaker asked them to please turn off their cellphones, that flash photography was forbidden and that they not get up and leave unless it was an emergency until intermission. Arthur nodded; it wasn't worth getting any of them worked into a tizzy.

Two men were already on stage, one peered at the other as if he couldn't see him very well. One of them called out to the other and they began to hold a conversation as if they were friends. And then two more men walked on stage and a short while later one of the first men walked off stage leaving the other three men on to converse. Then from one of the wings appeared the ghost of Hamlet's father and the three men coward in fear, Arthur would have found it funny, three men cowering in fear of a man dressed in all black and his face covered in white makeup, if he hadn't been so enamored by trying to figure out who Francis Bonnefoy was playing. The three guards of such pushed each other around as if to decide who would talk to said ghost.

And then the ghost left almost as fast as it had appeared, the ghost that would set the whole ball rolling for the play. The three men talked for a while on whether or not who they had seen really was the king. And then ghost reappeared and the men didn't act as frightened this time. But the ghost was gone faster than it had prior and the men continued to talk about ghost. And when the conversation seemed over the lights went out so there was only a dark blue so the stage hands could see where they were placing the set. Seven actors walked out on stage, Arthur couldn't make out face or anything during the blue out but six of them stood towards the center and one stood a few a feet from the other as if he was sulking. The man in the middle wore a majestic navy blue doublet and fencing sword at his hip and a golden crown on top of his head that reminded Arthur of the crown he'd seen in photographs of the king of Denmark wearing.

"_Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death The memory of green, and that it us befitted To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom To be contracted in one brow of woe, Yet so far hath discretion fought our nature That we with wisest sorrow think on him,_" The man the king, Hamlet's uncle Claudius said, and the others save for the one on the outskirts whom Arthur could not see well, the light did not shine too much on him, listened with intent as if drinking in every word the man said. As if they believe that he was truly sorry for his brother's death. "_Together with remeberance of ourselves. Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,_" He gestured to the woman beside him, she looked kind but that wasn't Tino's sister. Who had he said his sister was playing again? Arthur couldn't remember now. The king droned on and Arthur half listened and half wondered who Francis was playing and if he would look like how Arthur remembered him.

And then the King had stopped speaking and two men were. "_In that and all things will we show our duty._" One of the actors let out a loud snort but none of the others seem to pay it any mind.

"_We doubt it nothing: heartily farewell._" The King said and the two who had just spoken in snycrinsation with one another left the stage, the King turned to another man. "_And now, Laertes, what's the news with you? You told us of some suit; what's it Laertes? You cannot speak of reason to the Dane, And loose your voice: what wouldst thou beg, Laertes, That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?_" The King sounded angry as he spoke to the young man. "_The head is more native to the heart, the hand more instrumental to the mouth, Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father. What wouldst thou have, Laertes?_"

"_My dread lord, Your leave and favor to return to France; From whence though willingly I came to Denmark, To show my duty in your coronation, Yet now, I must confess, that duty done, My thoughts and wishes bend again towards France And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon._" The young man whom the king was raising his voice towards spoke and with a calmness that the king had not portrayed.

"_Have you your father's leave? What says Polonius?_" The King asked turning to another man on stage. The man off to the side watched the conversations with mild interest but Arthur couldn't glean much more.

"_He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave By laborsome petition, and at last Upon his will I seal'd my hard consent: I do beseech you, to him leave to go._" The older man said putting his hand on the younger man's shoulder.

"_Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine, And thy best graces spend it at thy will!_" The King turned to the man off to the side now. "_But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son-_" The spot light shone finally on the young man off to the side and Arthur could finally see him properly. Medium length blond hair rolled in waves off of his head to behind his back. A green doublet brought out more of the blue in his eyes. He had not shaved the stubble off of his prominent chin and Arthur felt himself grow faint as if his eyes could see him. This was Francis Bonnefoy the man from Arthur's memories.

"_A little more than kin, and less than kind._" Francis seemed to mutter to himself and Arthur realized that unlike most of the other actors Francis would be on stage almost the whole time and he would be there glaring at Arthur in the face. This was no mere man on stage this was an angel, he was Arthur's angel.

_Every day we started fighting,  
Every night we fell in love,  
No one else could make me sadder,  
But no one else could lift me high above._

_I don't know what I was doing,  
When suddenly we fell apart.  
Nowadays, I cannot find her,  
But when I do we'll get a brand new start._

_I'm in love with a fairytale,  
Even though it hurts,  
'Cause I don't care if I lose my mind,  
I'm already cursed._

**Author's Note (The part of the story where the author comes out and writes a silly note): Tino set Arthur up on a blind date and suddenly Francis reappears in his life. Oh no! (The author now doges rotten tomatoes thrown at her because she's being too over dramatic)**


	6. A Thousand Years

**Thousand Years**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia. Word in normal font are in different language, words that are in italics are in English.**

A blind date, seriously, when this night ended horribly at least he could blame Sharon and Monique for this. He didn't date, he didn't want to, why put himself through that heartache again? At least the show tonight had gone well and there would be plenty of alcohol at the after party tonight that if he really didn't want to remember the night he wouldn't have any issues. He didn't even know the poor bastard's name just that he was supposed to meet him at the cocktail bar at the after party. "Francis, there's someone here to see you." His make-up artist Denise said popping her head into the small dressing room he was using to change. He didn't really like having his own dressing room, he'd much preferred the idea of the communal one with most of the other actors as he had in previous productions he'd been in, all as minor characters or as background people pulled in as an extra. Charles and Sharon had been the ones to convince him that he should use the dressing room.

"Who?" Francis asked with a frown, none of the other actors needed to announce themselves before they came in, and Sharon loved to use that to her advantage. And no one that he knew had come to see him in Copenhagen.

"An Alfred F. Jones, he's got a press pass." Denise said ushering in the honey blond man, Francis couldn't stop himself from laughing at his cousin who was wielding his badge with furor.

"Let him in, Denise." Francis said smiling at Alfred's familiar presence.

"_You haven't changed a bit_." Alfred said matching Francis's smile with his own. He slid his press badge back into his pocket looking a bit sheepish as he did so. "_I wasn't sure they'd let me in by just telling security that I was your cousin._" Francis snorted, he was a stage actor not a movie star, paparazzi weren't going to try to sneak into his dressing room after a performance to take pictures of him to sell to the highest bidder.

"_I thought you were back in Moscow._" Francis commented as he used baby wipes to remove the pound and a half of make-up used on stage. Alfred shrugged as he pulled a stool out of the corner to sit on.

"_A new development, plus the guy I'm writing the article for threatened to not pay me. I'm an idiot but I'm not stupid._" Francis snorted but didn't make a comment on the subject. And Alfred grinned his impish grin that was infuriating and charming at the same time. His cousin hadn't aged a day since the last time Francis saw him.

"_You were brilliant up there tonight. You should try out for a movie_."

"_I'm a stage actor, Alfred, not a screen actor. They are very different._" Francis said, they'd had this discussion before in high school whenever Alfred would go see the plays he was performing. Francis loved being on stage, how every night was a different performance, a different audience and a different reaction. When you did movie acting you had to wait months before the movie was even seen and even then you don't get the whole satisfaction of hearing people clap for you at the end of the performance.

"_I know, I know, I just have always wanted to be able to walk away from a movie and boast that my cousin was playing Superman or Bilbo Baggins or some other action hero_." Alfred said.

"_Well you can boast that your cousin was in an international production of Hamlet._" Francis suggested but Alfred didn't seem to be thrilled by the idea. "_You haven't spoken with your brother have you?"_ Alfred shook his head.

"_No, not in a couple of months. He and Gilbert were having relationship issues though._" Alfred sighed wistfully. "_Do you ever miss it, home?_" And Francis knew that the American born wasn't talking about his Parisian apartment, but to Canada and the small town they'd grown up in, where their family still lived. Francis tried often not to think about Canada, too many memories he didn't want to ever think about again, but there were also years of good memories.

"_Yes_." He whispered, he missed his _Maman_, and his soft spoken cousin Matthew, and Gilbert and Antonio, the garden out behind his house that had been the setting for many of his adventures with Antonio and Alfred; fighting dragons amongst the lilies and finding dwarven halls in the azalea bushes.

"_It was our Shire._" Alfred said fondly.

"_Our what?_"

"_Our Shire, you know Lord of the Rings, where the hobbits are from_." Francis nodded, Alfred was a Tolkien fan just as his brother loved Star Wars, and the two of them could turn play grounds into a dark cave where Rancors and dragons who stole dwarven gold lived. Alfred had once proclaimed that the small woods behind his and Matthew's house was Fangorn Forrest where Matthew would protest and say it was the forest moon of Endor, this argument continued well into when they were both in high school.

"_Yes, I know._" Silence fell over the room and then Alfred spoke again on a very different topic.

"_I saw Arthur about a month ago._"

"_I know, Monique told me._"

"_He didn't recognize me, I don't know what's wrong with him, but you said it yourself I don't look any older than I did three years ago. But there was no hint of recognition in his eyes._" Francis frowned, Arthur wasn't one to play mind games with anyone, if he had seen Alfred and known who he was Alfred would know, the fact that Arthur hadn't made him concern.

"_And you are sure it was Arthur that you saw?_"

Alfred didn't protest, he didn't get angry that Francis was doubting his abilities to recognize people, he just nodded and responded with a simple one word yes and that was all the proof Francis needed that Arthur was in Copenhagen, somewhere working at a café and happy, and that was all Francis needed to know.

The after party was full of Copenhagen's rich and elite that the bigwigs in the acting company wanted to impress by throwing such an elaborate party and hoping to somehow get their funding for more shows. And Francis, being the star of the show had to endure being pleasant to all the wealthy elite, it wasn't that Francis didn't like rich people. That would be hypocritical as his father was from a wealthy French family that owned a few vineyards in southern France. But still, it didn't mean the Francis had to find them pleasant, it probably had been no accident that Dalton had broken his leg when he did avoiding this whole mess. "Hey, Francis," Sharon said bounding over with her fiancé John right behind her as well as a two other men. One was short, shorter then Arthur had been with amethyst color eyes that were more purple then Matthew's, and golden blond hair just a shade lighter than his own, there was no denying that this was Sharon's beloved younger brother Tino. The man beside him reminded Francis of a lion, he was a giant of a man, he'd probably tower over Ludwig, and he had cold blue eyes and a face that would intimidate most if Francis hadn't spent his childhood with Ludwig.

"Sharon, John." Francis acknowledged,

"Francis, this is my brother Tino; Tino this is my co-actor Francis, he played Hamlet." Sharon said, "And this is Berwald, my brother's giant of a boyfriend."

"Ah, sorry, so you're the one we set up on a blind date?" Tino said in impeccable French. He must have attended the same boarding school Sharon had. Sharon often spoke in French to Francis in order to practice what she had once spoke constantly at a boarding school in France where her parents had sent her as a teenager.

"Yes," Francis replied,

"Well, he's waiting over there for you." Tino said pointing towards the bar where a lone person sat, back turned to Francis with straw blond hair and a short stature. Francis felt his breath hitch as he recognized the color of sandy hair; it was Arthur's hair color. As if in a trance Francis walked over, he barely felt his feet touch the floor of the hotel ballroom, he could no longer see any of the other guests it was just him and the man that looked like Arthur.

"Arthur?" he asked ghosting a hand on the man's shoulder. He turned around and emerald green eyes met sapphire, it was Arthur, it was his Arthur. Francis felt his heart leap in joy, and it began to beat so fast that he was sure that the other man could hear it. To Francis it was as if the past three years had never happened, as if Arthur had never left him.

"It's you, the man from my dreams." Arthur said, and Francis only saw the hint of recognition in Arthur's green eyes. What had happened to Arthur these past years that would make him forget him and Alfred and maybe everybody else too. He looked healthier then Francis had ever seen him, he had filled out and was dressed nicely, was that an Armani suit? He also looked happier, the darkness that had always been on the edge of Arthur's eyes were gone and there was no hint of the past that had once haunted him. This was a whole Arthur, an Arthur that Francis had always hoped for.

"Arthur? W-what happened to you?"

"I- There was a car accident, a young man walking across the street was hit by a driver on their way to work. The young man suffered from severe brain trauma and lost his memories. That was about three years ago." Amnesia. The word hit Francis like a speeding train. Arthur was suffering from amnesia, he couldn't remember him, or Alfred, or Canada, to Arthur he was a perfect stranger, and this Arthur Kirkland was a perfect stranger to him. "All I could remember was you, your soft voice whispering my name." Francis felt himself choke; he wanted to reach over and hug the man, pepper his face with kisses and promises to never let him out of his sight. That he would always protect him, but he held back he couldn't rush into this. This Arthur didn't need protecting from the dark world he had been exposed to; this Arthur couldn't remember the chilling events of the Russian Sunflower.

"You- you look well." Francis finally said when he found his voice again, he smiled at Arthur trying to elevate some of the tension that had built in the younger man's stance.

"Francis, I don't know what I did to you in the past. I don't remember it, but I am sorry, I must have caused you a lot of pain." Arthur said reaching up to touch Francis's stubbly chin as if being compelled by some unknown force and Francis relished the touch, feeling those soft fingers touch him again. It had been so long, so very, very long.

"Yes." Francis saw Arthur visually wince and quickly began to retract his words. "But it doesn't matter now, you are here."

Arthur had a pensive look before he spoke again. "My name is Arthur Kirkland. I like tea, Doctor Who, and drawing . In the past three years I have had no successful dates, and I'm blaming you. Every time I would try your face would pop into my head and I would feel as if I was cheating on someone. I never knew if it was you or the other guy though that I was cheating on." Francis let out a half laugh wondering if he should feel flattered that even amnesiac Arthur couldn't forget his face even while on a date. He held out his hand for Arthur to shake.

"Well then, its nice to meet you Arthur Kirkland, I am Francis Bonnefoy. I enjoy long walks on the beach and romantic dinners." He gave Arthur a wink and felt his own heart leap at the sight of Arthur's smile. He never though he would ever see it again. "In all seriousness though, I enjoy acting hence my job, I like to cook and I'm an amateur expert on wine. My grandfather owns a vineyard in Southern France." Arthur nodded. "So does this mean I can buy you a drink now?"

"Well finally he shows that he knows how to treat a date."

"I'm French," Francis flipped a piece of his long blond hair behind his shoulder. "It's in our blood."

"Yes a Frog it would seem." Arthur commented offhandedly. "Rum and Spetzi mix please." He said to the bar tender at the cocktail bar.

"Vodka shots." Arthur gave him a disbelieving look.

"I never took you as a vodka drinker. You look more like a wine or champagne fop." Francis snorted.

"Wine and champagne never could take the edge off when I need it to. Vodka is much better for that." Francis said, "So tell me Arthur, what did you think of tonight's performance? Be as honest as you want, you won't hurt my feelings, I've heard it all." He asked quickly changing the topic, it did no good to dwell on unpleasant memories not when they'd just met. Later, when they were once again more comfortable with each other.

"To be honest, it was amazing, I've never seen anything like it. Was that your first time in lead role?"

"Yes," he admitted slightly sheepish about it. It really hadn't been that good, it was his first time playing a lead he had originally been the understudy which meant that he hadn't even had a role to begin with.

"You have a career ahead of you." Francis nodded and picked up the vodka shot that had just been slid towards him.

"Here's to the future." Francis said holding up the shot glass, Arthur smiled and raised his own glass before they both downed their drinks. Francis made the universal motion for another shot and leaned over to kiss Arthur's lips.

_Time stand still,  
Beauty in all she is,  
I will be brave,  
I will not let anything take away,  
What's standing right in front of me,  
Every breath,  
Every hour has come to this…  
One step closer._

_I have died everyday waiting for you,  
Darling don't be afraid  
I have loved you for a thousand years  
I'll love your for a thousand more,_

All along I believed I would find you,  
Time has brought your hear to me,  
I have loved you for a thousand years,  
I'll love your for a thousand more.

**Author's Note (the part of the story where the author comes out and write a silly note): February and March are awful times for me to be writing cause I'm so busy. I don't see myself updating again till April, sorry guys. But who knows I could get extremely inspired and somehow during the extremely busy March that I have I'll find time to write yet another chapter. I really want to thank all my reviewers; you guys are awesome and extremely encouraging. Please don't kill me for my cliffhangers, though I do believe that every author truly enjoys deep down leaving their audience in a state of wanting more. It's how we keep you guys hooked, remember the queen lady from 1000 Arabian Nights or whatever… I haven't actually read the tale myself… I probably should. Enough of my ramblings, thanks for reading and don't forget all flames are sacrificed to the llama gods.**


	7. So Cold

So Cold

**Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia.**

He was standing in line waiting to have his ticket checked to board the airplane, to go… somewhere else, somewhere away from here. How had he gotten here? Everything that was the last day seemed to be in a haze. Maybe he would show up and declare his love for the entire airport to see like they did in the movies and he would live happily ever after… again. It was the sort of cliché thing Gilbert would do, the self-proclaimed Prussian didn't look it, but he really was a big romantic deep down. Except when it came to this one little, ity-bity idea. Marriage. Gilbert was refusing to even think about them getting married. Oh sure, they were engaged and had been for the past three years, three years that Matthew had watched his friends and family get engaged and married in the time, Lovino and Antonio, Toris and Felix, Elizaveth and Rodriech, even Ludwig and Feliciano were engaged to be married soon, and Monique had called him two days ago to inform him that she and Marcello were going to be getting married. And he was jealous, he was green with envy every time he saw a bridal gown commercial on the television, or saw bouquets of flowers or even looked down at his own engagement ring on his hand. He would be the first to admit that in the beginning he hadn't been sure about getting married, he felt too young, he wanted to live a little before really settling down with Gilbert, but now he was ready. And Gilbert was not.

_**One day prior**_

Matthew tried to smile as he made his daily cup of coffee before he would sit down at the breakfast table with a brown toasted bagel in front of him and his laptop beside that reading his emails. Alfred sent him weekly emails, recently they had mostly been about his dislike of Copenhagen and how he didn't understand Danish and how much he really wanted to go back to Russia and his girlfriend Tatiana. A month ago though he'd received one telling him that Alfred had seen Arthur in a café in Copenhagen, working there apparently or something. His brother hadn't gone into great detail about the whole encounter. It was the first time any of them had, had any contact with the British man who had entered and changed their lives rather suddenly and then left just as suddenly as he came taking Matthew's cousin's heart with him when he left. Nothing had really ever been the same since Francis left, Antonio and Lovino had moved out of Montreal and now lived in a small apartment in Toronto where Antonio had just started working at a dance studio and Lovino was going to school. And Gilbert felt left behind and lonely and restless. They were fighting more often now, almost all the mugs in the house were broken or cracked at the very least; the only reason the pillows on the couch were in order was because that was where Gilbert had been sleeping for the past two weeks after Matthew banned him from the bedroom. He wasn't sure how many times he'd put the apartment back together in the past week never less the past month, they fought more times these past couple of months then Matthew could ever remember them fighting before.

He just felt as if there was something wrong with him, some hideous reason that Gilbert didn't want to get married. Why had he even asked in the first place if he didn't want to get married? You weren't supposed to be engaged you're whole life, engagement meant a promise to get married, and sooner rather than later.

_Hey Matt,_

_Francis was amazing last night in Hamlet. He's going to go places, little brother. Wish you could have seen it. You should come sometime to visit me in Moscow or something. Did you hear about Monique's engagement? I haven't met Marcello yet, but I did speak to him over the phone, he seems like a nice enough kid. Monique told me that Francis laid the law into him pretty quickly when they met, I can only imagine what he said, remember when he told Gilbert that it didn't matter if he was his best friend or not, if he hurt you he'd castrate him and make sure that no one would ever know if he really had ten meters or not. I hope things between you and Gilbert have gotten better._

_Francis just called. I guess Shannon (one of his costars) set him up on a blind date with her brother's roommate, only guess who the roommate turned out to be. Arthur. The date didn't go so well, Francis got drunk and kissed him and Arthur ran away. Oh, and apparently Arthur has amnesia, some kind of car accident three years ago about the time he arrived in Copenhagen. _

_Alfred_

Matthew's heart reached out for his cousin, his cousin who had lost so much in his lifetime; his sister had been kidnapped and thought dead for years, his mother committing suicide barely a year later unable to cope with the grief, Jeanne, his first love, developing cancer and dying their senior year of high school, and now Arthur was just one big roll of mess that Matthew wasn't sure he wanted Francis to be around. Could he handle any more heartbreak or would the next email he receives be telling him that Francis had committed suicide in his apartment? Maybe he should go visit him, be moral support for him, get away from Canada for a while, the people in Canada. Get away from Gilbert and all their issues. It sounded nice, but Matthew knew he'd never do that, he wasn't one to run away from his problems just because the road got rough, they had worked through so many other issues they could make it through this one too. For fuck's sake, Gilbert had gone through hell in back to rescue him from a crazed sociopath who ran a brothel, strip club type place.

Matthew went to work after he finished his bagel and typed out an email in response to his brother's. He worked part time as an assistant librarian while he was in college. It was fun with all the little kids and story time every Tuesday afternoon, and he enjoyed watching people look for books and recommending books to people. He knew enough of the faces to know who came in to do research for school and who was an actual book lover and some of them he even knew their favorite genera and authors so he could recommend books to try at the checkout counter. He'd been working longer hours since the fighting started, almost a full forty hour work week now that he also didn't have school to contest with. He left work at eight-thirty, and found an empty apartment waiting for him, not that he expected anything else, Gilbert hadn't come home earlier than ten for the past couple of weeks or so and every time he'd be rip roaring drunk. He was even more loud and obnoxious drunk then he was sober if that was hard to believe, and Gilbert's new best friend had become the source of many of their fights these past two weeks. He hated this, what had happened to them, what they'd become. He wished one of his childhood friends was still here, just so he'd have someone to commiserate with, he hadn't told Alfred how bad everything had gotten, Al had his own problems to deal with. He felt like the child he had once been before Alfred and his father came into their lives, the forgotten child. Only his mother had really ever remembered him when he was really little, even his pre-school teachers forgot who he was, and then Alfred had come and he was so loud and obnoxious Matthew could remember thinking that even his mother would forget about him now, too overwhelmed with this intruder in their lives. But Alfred made sure no one forgot him, helped him develop his own voice, and then joked that he regretted it when they got older and Matthew began to play hockey and get a reputation of his own.

A quick dinner of whatever Lean Cosine was in the freezer that night, and then he sat down with a book in the armchair to read before heading to bed. He didn't go out with friends anymore, didn't really watch TV, he hadn't watched Star Wars in ages. When had his life become so boring? When had he stopped enjoying it? Was that what was really wrong with him and Gilbert? Had they just become boring, or was it just him and Gilbert didn't want boring? He went to bed with these thoughts filling his head, knowing that he'd wake up in about forty-five minutes to Gilbert stumbling in the door, cursing. Only he never did. And when he woke up there was no sign that Gilbert had been there that night. What if Gilbert was lying in an alley way dead, his over active mind asked himself. What if something bad had happened to him? Lots of what if's played in Matthew's head as he made his daily cup of coffee. He had just been about to sit down when the key clicked in the lock and the door swung open revealing a very disheveled looking Gilbert. His hair was tussled very messily, and Matthew could see a bruise forming on his neck, a bruise in the shape of a- Matthew thought he was going to be sick as he dropped the mug, coffee and shards of cheap ceramic falling all over the kitchen floor.

"You cheating son of a bitch, I hope he was worth it!" Matthew very nearly screamed, he couldn't do this anymore; his chest felt very constricted suddenly and if there had been anything in his stomach he might have even gotten sick.

"I'm a man Matthew, I have needs! Something you've been denying to me!" Gilbert roared back and Matthew pushed back the tears that were threatening to fall, his throat becoming raw from holding back his cries.

"So that's all I am to you, a way to fulfill your needs." His voice had suddenly become calm, calmer than he expected it to be. "I see. Thank you for letting me know." And then he pushed past the other man making his way to the bedroom and locking the door behind him. He grabbed the suitcase and just began stuffing his clothes into it, he didn't know where he was going or what he was doing he just knew he could no longer stay here, in this apartment, their apartment. This bed had been the bed that Gilbert had asked him to get married in; this was where he had said yes, this was where they had expected to share the rest of their life once upon a time. And now, now everything was ruined and he could no longer bear to sleep in this bed, be in this apartment surrounded by all these memories. Had this been what Francis had felt as he lived in the same apartment Arthur had lived in for those many months after Arthur disappeared? Suddenly Matthew began to understand how Francis felt, and why Francis left.

_**Present time**_

"Boarding pass, sir." The brunette working the desk beside the terminal asked, Matthew passed her the thick paperish material that had come with his plane ticket. "Thank you for flying Air France." Oh, so that's where he was going, France.

He was lucky; somehow he had managed to get a window seat despite buying his ticket only today. That was nice, he supposed, at least he'd be able to see what he was going to crash into before they actually crashed. He couldn't believe the scenery he saw from the sky when he looked down at the ground, the formations in the earth and the squares dividing up the different farms, it was something you couldn't see when you were on the ground. Matthew hated to think about it, twenty-one and this was his first plane ride, his first time out of the country. He was the only one of his friends who had never left Canada before now; even Gilbert had been out of country when he was little visiting relatives that still lived in Germany with his Opa. But for the first time in a long time, Matthew felt as if he was doing something for himself. He felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off his chest. If Gilbert wanted to live the lone solitary life as a bachelor, that was fine with Matthew, but he was going to move on.

_You caused my heart to bleed,  
You still owe me a reason,  
I can't figure out why  
You caused my hear to bleed  
You still owe me a reason  
I can't figure out why_

_Oh, you can hear me cry  
See my dreams all die  
From where you're standing  
On your own  
It's so quiet here  
And I feel so cold  
This house no longer feels like home._

**Author's Note (the part of the story where the author comes out and writes a silly note): **Mwhahahahahahaha, you weren't expecting this were you? You're all screaming at me for not telling you what comes next with Arthur and Francis, I'm evil and I know. I originally was going to write what happened next and have it be chapter seven, but couldn't get the words right and this was what was happening in my head so you'll just have to deal with my side story line that I have been hinting at. Yes, you can see the division of where farms are or where they used to be in the Quebec country side when you are flying into or out of Montreal. It really is very pretty to look at. Thanks for reading and reviewing and please continue to review. Just remember all flames are fed to the llama gods.


	8. Talk Show Host

Talk Show Host

**Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia.**

The cloudy day darkened an already unlit living room, creating an ambiance of loneliness and solitude in the room. A single figure sat in a faux leather armchair that looked towards the unlit fireplace, a book rested on the small end table beside him. His normally blond hair looked dark from being unwashed, and a chin that was usually only covered in a light stubble had become almost unkempt looking. Francis lifted a shot glass filled with vodka to his mouth mechanically, opened his mouth, poured the containments of the glass into it, closed his mouth and put the shot glass down only to pick up the bottle of vodka pour more into the glass and start the cycle all over again like a well-oiled machine. He enjoyed the burning sensation that the back of his throat felt as he downed shot glass after shot glass, it was the only thing he was actually feeling right now. His whole body felt numb, two days ago he found the love of his life again, and two days ago he'd been so overly enthusiastic about finding him again, that he kissed him without thinking and lost him, again. Why was he so stupid, why couldn't he just think things through, he'd been miserable these past three years without him, losing him again after those few fleeting moments of happiness was unbearable.

Knocking came quite suddenly and unexpectedly at his door and he considered not going to get it, he didn't want company right now. He just wanted to wallow in his misery and drink. What if it was Arthur? Francis blinked; suddenly a little sober then he had been a second ago. He got up, hoping that if it was Arthur he wouldn't come off as desperate or needy with the drinking and the lack of lights on in the house, he could just always say that he was celebrating a job well done in his own way. Peering through the spy hole in the door his hope disappeared and frown formed on his face, who had called Matthew this quickly. He would never hear the end of his wallowing in pity state from his cousin; even his little sister wasn't as bad as Matthew. But Matthew would have heard his footsteps and know he was home.

"Matthew," He said swinging the door open. He was slightly shocked at his cousin's disheveled look, his hair was mused and his clothes rumbled, Francis would have guessed that he'd just had a good bout of sex if his eyes weren't all red and puffy as if he'd been crying. Very few people made Matthew cry without sorely regretting it later if not at the hands of Matthew himself, then Gilbert, Alfred or Francis.

"Where's the alcohol?" Matthew asked with just one sweeping look at Francis.

"Living room, why?" Francis asked allowing his cousin into his apartment; he was really going to have to have a talk with family members about calling before they dropped in. But Matthew just pushed past him and made a beeline for the living room. Francis raised his eyebrows in amusement as he shut the door; Matthew wasn't even pouring the vodka into a shot he was just drinking from the bottle. What had happened? Matthew very rarely drinks and when he did it was casually at a bar, but he tended more often than not to be the designated driver.

He headed into the kitchen to grab more bottles of any alcoholic beverage he could find. It looked like Matthew was dead set on drinking and wouldn't be stopping any time soon and Francis sure as hell didn't want to stop anytime soon. "So… is everything okay?" Francis asked sliding onto the couch that was cattycornered to the chair he had previously been sitting in beside Matthew.

"Gilbert can't keep his dick in his pants!" Matthew shouted, the bottle of vodka was almost empty and his face was now extremely flushed, was it healthy for someone of Matthew's stature to be drinking that much in such a short period of time? Wait, Francis shook his head as if that would somehow clear some of the alcohol he had previously consumed out of his addled head, had Matthew just said that Gilbert was cheating on him. "Nope! Not whatsoever, in fact I bet he's over in Canada right now having some big orgy and enjoying finally being single again after so many years. I hope he gets a whole bunch of those SDC's or SBT's, Frannie what's those things you get when you have un-un-un-" Matthew never really finished that sentence as he burst out into laughter and began to pull off his shirt. No wonder he never drank, was he always such a lightweight?

"Why don't you put that bottle away." Francis suggested trying to cover up the other alcohol bottles with a dollies on the coffee table.

"Nope, un-uh, I'm gonna get marriet toit, cause the dickhead won't marry me." Matthew slurred cradling the bottle of vodka close to his chest. Francis had half a mind to call Gilbert up right now and demand an explanation as to why Matthew was accusing him of cheating, but he was still recovering from his own relationship issues and was still slightly tipsy himself.

"Okay, well at least put your shirt back on." Francis amended taking the now doily covered bottles of alcohol and putting them behind his back as he walked back into the kitchen. Being halfway sober wasn't fun, he felt responsible enough to not let Matthew drink anymore, but all he wanted to do was drink too.

"I hate him!" The now empty vodka bottle went sailing into one of the dining room walls. Francis jumped putting the bottles he had been carrying down onto the kitchen counter and ran back to Matthew before he could hurt himself or someone else in his drunken anger. Tears streamed down his cousin's face as he had never seen before. Matthew had always been the strong one in the family even if he didn't always look it, no matter what you could always count on Matthew to be there for you, he always knew what to say even when others didn't. He even knew when it was time to say nothing and he would just listen or rub your back as you cried on his shoulder. He wasn't afraid to tell you what the reality was even if you didn't want to hear it. To see him this upset that he had drank a whole half a bottle of vodka in almost five minutes, that he was crying this hard made Francis want to tear Gilbert from limb to limb, no one hurt his cousin this badly and gets away with it, no one ever had. "I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!"

Francis made his way around the couch and wrapped his arms around Matthew. "Hey, hey, it's okay." Matthew's chest pressed into Francis's side and cried into his shoulder and Francis didn't say anything more he just wrapped his arms around Matthew and let him cry out whatever it was that Matthew had built up inside. How could this have happened? How could Matthew and Gilbert gone so wrong? Had Matthew even had anybody really to talk to throughout their issues? He and Alfred had gone to Europe and beyond, Feliciano and Ludwig were with Lovino and Antonio in Ottawa leaving just Gilbert and Matthew in Montreal. "I'm sorry; I should have never left you. I should have called more often. I'm so sorry, Matthew." But his words only made his cousin cry harder. "God, I'm so sorry."

"I don't understand where we went wrong." Matthew said pulling away from Francis finally, he flopped down on the couch and Francis followed him just letting the other man speak. "Things were going well and then they weren't. Three years ago when you left, I was the one who didn't want to get married, and maybe that's when things went wrong, I don't know. Maybe I was just giving Gilbert too much mixed signals and he'd had enough. We've been fighting, Francis, and it's been bad, it's been really bad. And I kicked him out of the bed because I couldn't bear to sleep next to him anymore and he was drinking a lot and the other night he just didn't come home. And at first I thought that he'd gotten too drunk and was lying in an alley way or something and then he walked through the door all fine and dandy and smug and- and," Matthew slapped his thigh and shook his head as if couldn't quite believe what he was saying. "And I don't know, I just knew, I knew he'd cheated and I was so angry I yelled at him for all of ten seconds and then I just got strangely calm, and I walked into the bedroom and packed my bags and left for- for somewhere, I didn't even know where I was going till I was getting on the plane.

"You, you want to know the-the worst part." Matthew grinned halfheartedly at Francis. "I still love him. And this," he pointed as his chest. "it hurts so badly."

"I know."

"Why? Why do I still love him? He ripped my heart out, Francis, he ripped my heart out and stomped on it. So why do I still love him?"

"I don't know," Francis leaned over and kissed Matthew's forehead like his mother used to do to him when he was scared as a child or hurt or she just wanted to show that she loved him. "I'm sorry I haven't been there for you, I've been busy over here dealing with my own problems selfishly. I should have remained in contact with you guys." He had been selfish and he knew it, he had been blinded by his own grief for so long that he hadn't been able to see the effect it had on others and Monique had tried to show him that, and he hadn't wanted to see.

"I don't blame you, Francis, I never have." Matthew said quietly, it was the same voice that had comforted him when Jeanne died, asked him the questions about life that no teen wanted to ask their parents about, the same voice that during the summer between Francis's freshman and sophomore year when everyone else was running around still trying to figure out what happened to Monique had come to him feeling as if no one else would truly listen and told him that he was gay. Only Alfred had known before Francis and that was because the two couldn't keep a secret from each other.

"Come on, let's go make dinner and get some food in you. You did just drink a whole half a bottle of vodka." Francis said standing up.

"You make dinner, I'm going to go find some aspirin and lie down." Matthew groaned and Francis felt a bit of satisfaction for the half a bottle of vodka his cousin had downed like it was water, honestly he thought only Russians did that, don't tell Alfred he said that.

"Okay, do you want to lie down on the bedroom or on the couch?" His question was answered by Matthew sprawling out on his couch. "I'll go find you some aspirin then."

"Thanks, Frannie." Matthew groaned,

"Oh, and Matthew, put a shirt on, or I'll take pictures of you holding the vodka bottle and send them to Alfred." Francis said good naturedly before disappearing down the small hallway to his bathroom.

Arthur took a deep breath before putting his hand up to knock, was he at the right apartment, had Alfred even given him the right address? Of course the American had given him the right address, he wasn't trying to play some nasty trick or anything, he wanted Arthur to give Francis another chance. Oh here goes nothing. Arthur put his knuckles against the wooden doors, just diganol of the brass 714 and then knocked against the wooden door. He held his breath again as he heard movement inside the apartment. Francis was home then. The knob turned and Arthur felt his heart beat faster. There was so much he wanted to tell Francis, he wasn't upset about the kiss, he had been shocked yes, but upset no. He had enjoyed what conversation he and Francis had, had before said incident and he felt a connection there he couldn't explain. Plus Alfred had refused to give him all the details concerning his and Francis's romance the first time around so if he wanted answers to his past he would have to talk to the Frenchman, Alfred refused to say but the bare basics. He and Francis met under unusual circumstances that required him to live with Francis in Montreal, Canada. They had lived together about a month before some more unusual circumstances wound Arthur in the hospital where Arthur disappeared.

The man who answered the door was not Francis. They had similar wavy blond hair, though Francis's was longer and a lighter color, this man had close to amber but not quite and he had indigo colored eyes hidden behind a wire frame of glasses unlike Francis's sapphire blue. He was a very handsome young man, probably a year younger then Francis. It didn't take long for Francis to rebound if the man's half nakedness was anything to go by. "Arthur, come in." Did, did he know this man? There was something familiar about him now that Arthur saw him. He walked in mechanically still trying to search his head as to where he had seen the young man before.

"Matthew, who is at the door?" Francis asked coming from down the hallway. Arthur almost didn't recognize him with the amount of stubble that could nearly be called a beard all over the Frenchman's face. "Arthur."

_I want to,  
I want to be someone else or I'll explode  
Floating upon this surface for the birds  
The birds  
The birds_

_You want me  
Fucking well come and find me  
I'll be waiting with a gun and a pack of sandwiches  
And nothing, nothing, nothing  
_

**Author's Note (the part of the story where the author comes out and write a silly note): I really do like the bond between Francis and Matthew, it's very much a big brother, little brother relationship. I don't think I write drunk people very well though, but I don't have much experience being around them either so I can't really say what they do. But I thought Matthew might a little bit of a lightweight and that he might not have much experience of drinking but on occasion. **

**Please review.**


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